It's getting closer. Moscow has just celebrated. Now less than three hours before new year reaches me. As its now left Asia there are more people on the planet in 2019 than 2018. So whether it's already happened or yet to come, happy new year tooters.

@blakehaswell One factor to consider is that if the Australian law is considered to be "successful" then similar laws will be passed elsewhere.

Some possible tactics:

- Ensure that any backdoors which the government adds are discovered and publicized - Work towards reproducible builds - Encourage everyone not to trust proprietary chat apps. Assume that such apps are already backdoored - Devise and deploy systems for monitoring the relevant open source projects. For example, a system which monitors open source chat apps and lists changes to cryptography related sections. Make code review of sensitive files trivial - The government won't follow its own laws, and will use apps which are not backdoored. Use FOIA or anything similar to check what apps are used/purchased by officials and point out the hypocrisy - Run cryptography workshops for your people. Make cryptography cool. Make it fashionable. Make songs and art about it. The government will prefer that people are uneducated on the topic

every new influx of people to the fediverse reiterates to me the need for and importance of community-owned social infrastructure. whether it’s hostile ToS changes, manipulative algorithms, exploitive surveillance, etc, etc, corpers have shown they can’t steward these spaces ethically. the existence of fedi, for all its evolving flaws and growing strengths, has shown me that we can do better for each other ✊️❤️